News

Dates:
Filter:
Accountability and Oversight, Appropriations, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Ethics and Influence, Modernization, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for 6/26/23 – Teeing Up a Busy July

By DanielSchuman June 26, 2023 15 min read

TOP LINE This week Congress starts its two-week Independence Day holiday. We’re hoping to take next week off from writing our little newsletter, but we’ll be back. Among the highlights from this past week: Senate Appropriators adopted 302(b) allocations that are very different from the House’s untenable numbers, but with many Republican defections the National […]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Continue Reading
Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Announcements and Statements, Advocacy, Blog posts

Demand Progress Statement in Support of New Resolution Granting Senate Staff the Right to Unionize

By DanielSchuman June 23, 2023 1 min read

“The introduction of a resolution to grant Senate staff unionization rights long available to workers across this country is an important step toward strengthening Congress,” said Taylor J. Swift, senior policy advisor at Demand Progress. “We commend Senator Sherrod Brown and all senators supporting this important resolution to improve congressional workforce rights. A year of […]

Tags: ,
Continue Reading
Accountability and Oversight, Announcements and Statements, Announcements, Blog posts

Demand Progress Statement on Today’s Reintroduction of the PRESS Act

By DanielSchuman June 21, 2023 3 min read

Today, Rep. Kevin Kiley and Rep. Jamie Raskin in the House and Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Mike Lee, and Sen. Durbin in the Senate reintroduced the Protecting Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, legislation that prohibits overreach by government prosecutors seeking to extract confidential information and sources from reporters and their communications providers. The […]

Tags: ,
Continue Reading
Appropriations, Ethics and Influence, Appropriation Tracking, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for June 20, 2023: Approps Heats Up

By DanielSchuman June 20, 2023 21 min read

TOP LINE After a House Administration Subcommittee hearing focused on the personal rather than the institutional aspects of the Office of Congressional Ethics, we take a deeper look at why that office is vital to an ethical Congress. Congressional unions scored an historic win for committee staff and others. This week both chambers are in […]

Tags: , , , , ,
Continue Reading
Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Announcements and Statements, Advocacy, Announcements, Blog posts

Statement on Today’s Announcement of New House Staff and Committee Unions

By DanielSchuman June 15, 2023 2 min read

Today, several congressional offices — including the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Democratic staff — have filed union petitions in the House. Staffers in Reps. Val Hoyle, Sylvia Garcia, and Mark DeSaulnier have all recently filed union petitions while a majority of staffers in the offices of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, Mark Takano, Sean […]

Tags:
Continue Reading
Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for June 12, 2023: Who’s the boss?

By DanielSchuman June 12, 2023 19 min read

TOP LINE This week. The House and Senate are in and we will see whether Republican House leadership regains control of the floor. (We discuss the power struggle in more detail in the next section.) We expect to see top-line appropriations numbers in the House, a few (big) appropriations markups, and NDAA subcommittee markups in […]

Tags: , ,
Continue Reading
Ethics and Influence, Announcements and Statements, Announcements, Blog posts

Bipartisan Coalition of 35 Organizations and Individuals Urge House to Protect and Strengthen the Office of Congressional Ethics

By DanielSchuman June 12, 2023 7 min read

In advance of tomorrow’s House Administration Oversight Subcommittee hearing on the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), 35 organizations and individuals across the political spectrum sent a letter today to leaders of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee urging them to protect and further strengthen the OCE in its mission. Notably, the coalition asks for the removal […]

Tags: ,
Continue Reading
Appropriations, Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for June 5, 2023: A return to normalcy

By DanielSchuman June 5, 2023 9 min read

TOP LINE The debt limit crisis mercifully is over, for now, without the Senate as much as cutting into its three-day weekend. The institutional conditions that enabled the drama, however, remain. For now, it’s back to business on the urgent matters of the day like messaging bills about appliances. We’ll be waiting for the stalled […]

Tags: ,
Continue Reading
Accountability and Oversight, Modernization, Announcements and Statements, Blog posts

The House’s new Statements of Disbursements with Improved Metadata Disclosure

By DanielSchuman May 31, 2023 3 min read

In a win for government spending transparency, the House is publishing highly detailed information about the money it spends on itself. The Clerk of the House just released the latest House Statements of Disbursements — ​​which catalog every penny spent by every person in the House of Representatives — with new metadata (or entity identifiers).  […]

Tags: , , ,
Continue Reading
Appropriations, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, Ethics and Influence, Modernization, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 30, 2023: The debt limit agreeement

By DanielSchuman May 30, 2023 22 min read

TOP LINE Appropriations bills’ markups, scheduled to begin last week, have taken a hiatus awaiting the outcome of the topic du jour. It’s not clear that House Republicans would have been able to pass those bills individually. This week: the deal that Pres. Biden and Speaker McCarthy have reached to raise the debt limit scrambled the […]

Tags: , , , ,
Continue Reading
Accountability and Oversight, Appropriations, Congressional Security, Ethics and Influence, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 22, 2023: The plan for Congress’s funding in FY 24

By DanielSchuman May 22, 2023 25 min read

TOP LINE Government accountability requires both structural mechanisms and personal will. By moderately decreasing funding levels for the Legislative branch, House appropriators preserved most of the structural accountability capacity of Congress in their FY 2024 spending package. Individuals, however, continue to dodge holding peers accountable. The US Capitol Police is allowing former acting chief Yogananda […]

Tags: , , ,
Continue Reading
AI and Emerging Technology, Appropriations, Congressional Security, Congressional Workplace Fairness and Inclusion, First Branch Forecast, Blog posts

First Branch Forecast for May 15, 2023: Unions, CRS, USCP, and the Debt Debacle

By DanielSchuman May 15, 2023 17 min read

TOP LINE In a place driven by interpersonal relationships, failures to treat other people with respect in the Legislative branch stand out. Last week, we learned a lot more about how the people inside CRS feel about how upper management treats them and how that impacts its capabilities. We did so through its union, which […]

Tags: , , ,
Continue Reading